We sure know how to win friends and influence enemies in Louisiana. After our Democrat political leaders, joined by Republican Sen. David Vitter, criticize the federal government for a month, they then ask the federal government for $250 billion for reconstruction, of which $40 billion is for Army Corps of Engineers projects  waiving any state matching requirement.

To put this into perspective:

# The $250 billion is not far behind the $350 billion estimated spent on the military aspects and their aftermath of the war of terror since Sep. 11, 2001  which means in reconstruction terms (leaving out the actual war-making expenses), Louisiana actually is asking for more than countries with 10 times its population which face far more damage.
# The $40 billion is ten times the annual Corps budget, and 100 times the annual amount typically received by Louisiana which gets more such funding than any other state.
# Also, it is nearly three times the size of the entire request for coastal restoration efforts in the state.
# Finally, it is over 13 times the present annual state budget, and around 125 times the present annual capital outlay budget.

Making matters worse is the pork-laden nature of the request, including such favorites as the project which Sen. Mary Landrieu intervened with which potentially took money away from flood protection for New Orleans and the boondoggle, unnecessary Industrial Canal lock. (Worse, it seems that one of the contributors to the flooding was having the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet channel open, where opponents of the locks rebuilding have argued that the Port of New Orleans has deliberately kept the channel open as a bargaining chip for the locks rebuilding. The proposal neglects to mandate this closure.)

In addition, $50 billion of it would being the form of open-ended grants, while $13 billion would go to roads (does that have anything to do with the fact that, over 15 years later, the state still hasnt finished most road projects it promised to do with a special gasoline tax? Nice, confidence-inspiring track record.) And more extraneous requests are in there  and this does not include the extra social benefits already being paid out by the federal government to displaced people.

And who would control the disbursement of this money? It seems the nine-person panel would have a Louisiana majority.

So, lets get this straight. Louisiana, from some of her federal officials through some state officials all they way down to city and other local governments, countenanced negligence from benign to irresponsible in ensuring proper flood protection and in dealing with hurricanes. And now these same people have formulated a plan wanting the country to pay an incredible sum of money to the state controlled by people from the state to deal with the aftereffects and, apparently, Louisianas past inability to utilize our resources efficiently in other areas?

The rest of the country is going to look at this and think were still stuck on stupid. A little realism, where we look less like unreformed junkies asking for fix because of problems in part we helped to create in our own lives, would be in order in such a request. Remember, after all, the golden rule.

I believe Hannity did the math on what that breaks down to based on NO's population before KAtrina. If every citizen of NO returned to the city, that would mean that they would each receive $500,000 per PERSON!! Not family. Not couple. Per person. Damn i wish a flood would destroy my whole area so that i could make a quick $500k off of uncle Sam.

This mindset sickens me. We got hurt so give us money. Nevermind the fact that insurance is set to pay out billions of dollars for all those that had it. Nevermind the fact that these people chose to live in a floodplain. LA wants $250 billion from the rest of us schlubs to rebuild.

How much do you want to bet that if they got the full $250 bil, that 95% of it would never make it to reconstruction projects? Im willing to place all $250 billion on a double or nothing wager. I can't lose. These greedy SOB's see a money pile and are salivating over the possibilities.

And the one thing i better not see is a new tax called "Katrina Tax" or some such bullshit to pay for this. Disaster taxes never recind once the disaster is paid for. Take for example the Johnston flood back in the 1930's of PA. They enacted a state tax to help pay for the relief effort. To this day, that tax is still on the state books. None of that money collected has even seen Johnstown in the last 50 years but it is collected nonetheless.

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